Fewer customers, lower sales, and an unusually high employee turnover rate. That’s exactly what having disengaged employees looks like.
A lack of engagement within your support team, in particular, translates into hundreds of other issues you could face in all of the other areas of your business.
But you can tell when active disengagement is happening and prevent it from taking over your team. So here we’re taking a thorough look at spotting the first signs of disengaged agents and ways to avoid disengaged employee behaviors.
What are the first signs of a disengaged employee?
Spotting a disengaged employee is quite easy when you know what to look for. Also, note a lot of disengagement signs aren’t obvious from the outside. To get a comprehensive look at whether your agents are disengaged or not, you’ll need to regularly check in with your agent, talk to their peers, or take a closer look at their work.
But let’s go over the disengagement cues you should observe:
- Declining productivity: Disengaged employees will show decreasing output and quality of work. They might take longer to finish a task or you might notice more careless mistakes (they didn’t make before) from their end.
- Increased absenteeism and tardiness: Unexcused absences and frequent lateness are direct signs of disengagement. It’s then up to you to understand whether this absenteeism is due to a lack of interest in their work or a personal issue in their lives that’s distracting them.
- Lack of communication and initiative: Have your agents become more withdrawn and less proactive? This is clear if they avoid team interactions like meetings or lunch break chats. They might also be hesitant to volunteer for new assignments or could prefer delegating their work so they won’t have as much to handle.
- Negative body language: Take note of nonverbal signs like frequent sighing, eye-rolling, and frowning. With remote workers, not turning on their cameras during meetings is another telltale sign.
- Negative attitude: Think of making negative comments about their work and colleagues or being extra pessimistic about new ideas and projects.
- Fewer interactions with customers: Are agents more detached or disinterested in helping customers? If they seem reluctant to help or they lack the attention to detail they used to have, they might just be disengaged.
Note: You probably won’t see all of the see signs in one single employee. People can be good at masking their real feelings so it’s best to sit down and have open talks with them. Pair this with tracking their behaviors to spot any changes or red flags before they impact their performance and happiness at work.
When agents don’t care enough
Disengaged employees mean they’re only showing up for work to get their money and call it a day. This could look awful for your organization and especially for your support team.
One reason is because of the low customer satisfaction score you’ll see.
Disengaged customer support agents are simply not motivated enough to put in the extra work and deliver the best possible experience to customers. In practice, this looks like this:
- They take too long to respond to tickets
- They provide scripted answers or simply send customers a link to your Help Page
- They’re not empathetic on calls and messages
This also drives down customers’ satisfaction with the brand.
In fact, unhappy customers are more likely to leave negative reviews online or warn their peers away. 13% out of customers will tell at least 15 or more people about a negative experience they had.
Behind this dissatisfaction: Slow responses, unhelpful agents, or an overall poor experience where customers have to ask for a different agent to fix their problem or leave altogether.
Beyond this, it’s these very agents that should be responsible for noticing and reporting on a customer’s negative experiences. But with disengagement blocking the way, you’re only facing more friction that will drive people (and brand promoters) away.
How to avoid disengaged workers in your support team
The good news is employee disengagement can be prevented. In most cases, you’ll want to look at industry benchmarks or the behavior of your agents to know when it’s time to make a change.
However, for long-term results and no unexpected customer service challenges, we’d recommend implementing at least some of the following methods to avoid disengaged employees and improve your culture over time:
Set missions for your agents with Kaizo
One way to keep agents engaged is to create rituals. But that doesn’t mean scheduling more meetings regularly or getting agents to report on their work every day.
Instead, you’ll want to assign Missions. Think of these as goals your employees can easily reach and automatically track.
These will allow agents to visualize their growth and stay focused. Plus, you’ll be able to create a personalized experience for every agent in much less time than before. Not to mention your agents will stay engaged with every achievable goal that brings on a new fun challenge.
Involve everyone in the agent feedback process
Getting a holistic look at what’s going on with and around an agent lets you prevent the big engagement killers from happening. Understaffing, low agent motivation, and burnout are just three of the issues you might only be able to spot when you really sit down and talk to everyone on the team.
TJ Treviño, HR Generalist, notes how important it is to know that thinking of feedback is not a one-way process:
TJ further advises using 360 reviews or informal feedback (like one-on-one meetings) to get agents invested in the feedback loop and prevent disengaged employees:
“Instead, they might think they’re only a target of criticism. Supervisors should be open and amenable to improvement to limit the perception of injustice or top-heavy power imbalances. That’s all aimed at creating a culture of all-level engaged employees who are used to dealing with continuous improvement.”
Use gamification to celebrate successes
We’re huge promoters of rewarding employees for great customer service. But it shouldn’t end with the support they offer. The way they interact with their colleagues, their proactivity, the ideas they bring, and even their loyalty should all be rewarded.
But these are things that require your attention every single day. Gamifying the whole rewards process will make it easier for both leaders and agents to turn work and celebrating wins into things they can look forward to.
By using Kaizo’s gamification, automatic goal setting, and personal ninja avatars, you can quantify and gratify great results in real time. This makes it easier for managers to understand who deserves to get recognition for their achievements. Plus, it gives you the chance to provide further feedback or possible outcomes for the future.
This is especially handy as you’ll be able to spot high achievers who might otherwise be too shy to speak up and get the spotlight. That’s just perfect for ensuring everyone gets the acknowledgement they deserve.
Read more about how we’ve managed to leverage gamification to drive productivity.
So, what should you do as soon as you spot the first signs of a disengaged employee?
Once you’ve identified non-engaged employees, you’ll need to act immediately to fix the underlying issues. The methods above will help you keep agent engagement levels at top levels. But you can also use them to reverse problems that might have been lowering employee engagement and motivation over time.
For instance, if your employees don’t feel like they’re getting the recognition they deserve for their work, don’t wait for them to stop delivering. Set up a gamified employee rewards system to make them feel appreciated and give them the chance to further grow in their roles.
